


Parting Ways

by Machina (XMachina)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, one sided carlos/kevin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 21:00:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5885005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XMachina/pseuds/Machina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Saying goodbye isn't easy when you have nothing left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Parting Ways

Kevin found himself sprinting, dirt and dust spraying behind him as he ran as quick as he could through the desert otherworld. The sun, the real honest-to-stars sun was beating down on him, sweat beading down his face and around the collar of his dress shirt. His hands were balled into such tight fists that his nails might have pierced through his palms, if they weren’t already bitten down to the quick. In his hands was a crumpled note, that had been torn off a pad of yellow paper, left for him in the station. 

He stumbled, and gasped in raspy breaths of dry desert air. In the distance, the screams of the never ending roller coaster were all he could here, drowning out any prayer he had of hearing the shuffle of heavy work shoes, the shuffle of a lab coat being adjusted, the click of a pen after completing forbidden notes. 

The sand stung at his eyes, or maybe it wasn’t the sand at all. He cheeks became wet, and the blood caked onto his skin began to clear away with each tear. He blinked hard, blocking the sand he was kicking up from his vision. He trusted himself to wander aimlessly for a moment without the bias of sight to guide him. 

He couldn’t look at anything in the otherworld- any of the things he’d been working so hard on since he had come to be tossed violently into here. The buildings made of whatever they could scrap together. The roller coaster that ran on endlessly, left people screaming, screaming, and never getting off (if he still had half his brain left, he would have found the delicious irony in that, but the romanticist part of him had been beaten to a bloody pulp a good, long time ago.) The masked warriors that were dragging themselves slowly along the community, monitoring it, glanced at him and his pathetic display of clambering across the desert. 

Finally, he collapsed to the ground. He wasn’t strong at all, it was amazing he could run at all. He wasn’t redesigned to run. His fingers were still curled aching from being held so tightly. The paper spilled from his hands, into the dirt. 

He did not know why he was so scared of the contents in the letter. His brain new, but most of it was off access to his stream of consciousness. His brain, though, had registered it was afraid. It was afraid to be alone. But he was forbidden to be afraid, so he didn’t know any better than what his gut told him.  
He gasped in a shaky breath, full of dry air, and phlegm, and rickety vocal cords. He mouthed the man’s name, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He sat on his knees, staring at nothing, his vision swimming past the tears in his eyes.

He was so scared. He was so scared to be alone, broadcasting to nobody, smiling to nobody. He didn’t want to be alone. He couldn’t take it. And certainly after he’d met Carlos and felt.... felt less alone than he ever had before (or that he remembered.) He couldn’t lose that. He’d always been gripping to his remaining sanity by the tips of his fingers. He couldn’t handle the finishing blow. 

Something told him he was already gone. He wouldn’t have left that note if he intended to say goodbye properly. Kevin gripped at the sand, which spilled out of his fingers, still crouched feebly on the ground. “Please,” he rasped to nobody, meaning nothing by it, meaning everything by it. 

It was only after a minute of trying to compose himself (in the jumbled mass of lack of emotion and too much emotion he considered “composed”) that he realized he was in pain. Piercing pain. It must have been from running. His body couldn’t take it. It had been rebuilt, specifically, not to take things like running, and screaming, and hoping.  
“Please don’t leave me alone again,” he whispered through a gritted-teeth smile. He wasn’t even aware what he meant by “again.” He’d always had his friends in the bluffs! His happy, smiling friends! He’d never even thought to be sad then.  
So why was he so sad then? 

Realizing Carlos was gone was taking a good deal of time, and he thought, reasonably, that it meant he would not be able to actually recover from Carlos being gone for a good long time. He sat in the sand, staring at the ground. After some time, (time was a sticky thing, he didn’t quite understand how it moved, or how much of it had moved, he’d been trained to care about the now) he felt something large on his shoulder. He felt something hulking above him, as well. He jumped. Slowly, he turned, black eyes slowly fixing on what was above him. Alicia was looking down at him, and Doug’s hand was rested comfortingly on his shoulder.  
Doug and Alicia bristled softly, looking at him above him.  
His grimace softened into a smile.


End file.
